Our Chauffeur Takes a Day Off at the Grand Canyon of the Colorado
By the way, a word about the Navajos whose dwellings in no way resemble the staired adobe pyramids in Acoma, Taos and Laguna. The Navajo huts—hogans they are called—are made of logs and twigs plastered with mud, not all over like an icing, but merely in between the logs as a mortar. They have no openings except a low door that you have to stoop to enter, and a smoke hole in the center of the domelike roof. Inside, if the ones at the Grand Canyon are typical, as they are supposed to be, they are merely one room with a fire burning in the center and blankets spread around the edge of the floor close under the slanting walls. Personally I feel rather embarrassed on being told to look in upon a group of swarthy figures who contemplate the intrusion of their privacy in solemn silence. In one of them a mother was rolling her plump brown baby on its swaddling board. When it was securely tied in place, although the father carried it outside in order to allow me to take its picture, I nearly got into trouble about it. The shutter of my camera had to be set first and then released which made two clicks. When I paid the regulation quarter, he was furious and demanded double pay. I, on my side, thought I was being imposed upon as he had himself volunteered to hold the baby for me for twenty-five cents. E. M., who divined the difficulty, quickly took the film pack out, and holding it open against the light, explained to the Indian carefully, “Little click no picture.” And the Navajo, being quite satisfied with the quarter, I then gave him the second one—a senseless, but commonplace proceeding.
Meanwhile, comfortably lounging on the terrace overlooking this greatest of all great canyons, an old-timer is talking of “the good old days of Hance’s camp before this high-falutin’ hotel was built.” And at his mere suggestion I become vividly aware that, after all, the way I like best to see anything is comfortably. Perhaps there might be an added awe if one stood alone at the brink of this yawning abyss, perhaps some of the gnarled roads and small clefts that seemed wonderful when we were crawling among them might have seemed dull little places from the terrace of a luxurious hotel, but being at heart—no matter how much I might pretend to be above the necessity of comfort—an effete Easterner, I very gratefully appreciate the genius of the man who built this hotel for such as I.
CHAPTER XXV
THROUGH THE CITY UNPRONOUNCEABLE TO AN EXPOSITION BEAUTIFUL
Says Los Angeles, “Whatever you do, don’t call me Angy Lees”!
Laboriously E. M. wrote her name as she herself pronounced it, “Loas Ang-hell-less.” With the piece of paper before me I can say it glibly enough, but in coming upon it unprepared, my only hope is to follow his flippant but very helpful suggestion and mentally dive through it. First, get hell as the objective plunge fixed in mind, then start on loas (like a run-off), Ang (hit the springboard), hell (the dive), less (into the water).
I am not very certain, though, that I want to call her at all. Perhaps we had the spleen, but the meaning and beauty of the city was quite as obscured to us as her name is to those having no knowledge of Spanish. Another thing that is even more obscured is why Los Angeles calls herself the City of Hotels? New York might as well call herself the City of Mosques, or Chicago the Citadel of Fortifications, or Colorado Springs the Seaside Resort! All the way across the continent in the various illustrated information books that are strewn for the edification of idle tourists around mezzanine writing-rooms, you read and read and read of Los Angeles hotels. Not a word does any one of these pamphlets say about the Southern capital’s gigantically growing industries, fertile surroundings, automobile interests, millionaire mansions, peerless parks, or even the height to which the June thermometer can soar. Each advertising line acclaims it solely as the City of Hotels.
“Which shall be your hotel?” reads one eulogy. “You have only to name your ideal, and choose whatever you like.” “If you care most for food there is the restaurant of the Van Nuys; if you want a homey place to stop at, you have a score of smaller hotels to choose from. But of course if you want to find the most luxurious metropolitan hostelry on the entire continent there is the Green and Gold lobby at the Alexandria.” How the lobby in itself is supposed to so much contribute to your happiness and comfort, you have no idea. But each and every advertisement either begins or ends with a description and a full-page picture of this imposing hallway. To test the peerless perfection of this Blackstone rival is naturally irresistible and into its overwhelming gorgeousness you go! The gorgeousness is there quite as in the pictures, also it is in every way a perfectly up-to-date and luxurious hotel. You wonder, though, is the cost of food inordinately high? Are wages prohibitive? Is it merely monopoly or forces of circumstance beyond its control that allows the only strictly up-to-date hotel in the place to charge such prices? At Trouville, in the season, or Monte Carlo, your bill can be rather staggering, but at least you get the quintessence of exotic luxury and the most unlimited offerings in diversions that the purveyors to the spenders of the world can achieve. When, however, a commonplace city of extremest dullness asks you Monte Carlo prices, higher than the Ritz in New York or the Blackstone in Chicago, you find a certain much-advertised green with gold lobby illuminingly symbolical of the guests who would for any length of time stay there.